Wonder-wounded hearers
Another Day in Boston, beginning earlier and thus leaving me with more time to view paintings at Harvard. I am much impressed by the collections there–at the new Sackler which is a mini British Museum and at the Fogg which has a fine spread of every period and is a student’s museum–good for making comparisons. A room full of Rembrandt drawings assembled by a professor for one of his classes–and Bernini Teracotta–An Egyptian swimming girl, and many marvelous landscapes: one by Claude Lorrain and two or three by Poussin himself. Delightful French Romantic stuff: a woman with blue silk dress pulling her child–and a wild park in back–all rough nature–vivacity, energy, life–all of those things which the observer might wish for himself and which he has perhaps seen in brief moments in his own day. But here in art they can be returned to, and their effect, as Oscar Wilde would say, can be repeated.
I want so much to see and composure to compose my impressions. The sense of things to fill in my sentences– the thought to study art long and tirelessly–and also the urge to record the changes that art makes on my susceptible soul or on my yearning mind as I pine like the pines by the sea for blue skies and fair weather but remain undaunted by the occasional storm, which, after all, provides the moisture I need for my sap. And I transform what I receive, but we receive all for we are deep, standing on the street corners receiving the trash of the world, letting it fall into our depths, but remaining clear, for we are deep. The thin thinker is not so thin, nor are the surfaces of the paintings a problem. They shall become as the enthralled center of a wounded rose.
His wonder-wounded hearers amazed at his words.
Remembering that these words came from a true experience: amazed–wonder,–(these from a religious source)
Since I first looked at Manet, Monet, and Renoir I have passed a taste for them. Where once I hurried to the French Impressionist galleries to stare eagerly at their works I know stumble on them casually and for the most part unconcernedly–because there are so many works of other periods which hold my attention for far longer and more intensely.